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My next project is to make some things to hang above the baby’s changing mat in the nursery. At the moment I can’t say what shapes or colours I am using as the sex is a secret.

At the moment I have a few things hanging up already. We bought a pot rack from ikea to hang from the ceiling and I got some twinkly fairy lights that light up in different sequences and we have two perspex animals that light up hanging down too. I’m hoping that the new sewn additions will fit in and look really nice.

I’ll reveal more once I’ve had the baby (due today but no appearance as of yet!)

These are all of the lovely shiny bag findings/accessories that I used on my bag, with the exception of some magnetic closers that my mum gave me and a little crystal effect button which I put on one of the side pockets. The pattern tells you to use velcro to close the bag but having had velcro on my old nappy bag and it getting stuck to absolutely everything and getting all dirty and full of fluff, essentially becoming useless, I wanted to use something different and I think the magnetic closers give it a more expensive look. The pattern also gives you a piece to make a strap out of fabric but I felt that it would end up getting all creased and looking awful quite quickly so instead I had the idea to try and make a strap like you would see on other bags like ones by Pink Lining or Cath Kidston. I found it quite hard to find a webbing strap that I could just clip on to the bag and having scoured the internet I found this luggage strap from Marks & Spencer for £5 which I thought was an absolute bargain, plus its just the colour I wanted and super long too so gave me some allowance for mistakes. I cut off the plastic clip and slide adjuster in favour of using silver pieces to make it look a little more professional. Because I wasn’t sewing in the strap to the bag like in the pattern I had to buy some D rings and make some tabs to hold these on to the side of the bag which I then fixed with rivets. Although I love the luggage strap it actually ended up being a bit of a pain only because of its width it was too wide to fit normal swivel clips to allow me to clip it on the bag without the webbing of the strap getting all creased and folded over but the solution came on ebay where I found these huge swivel clips from a shop selling fixings for horse rug repairs. This is also where I got the slide adjuster to keep the strap in place. The rivets also came from ebay for about £1. It appears really difficult to be able to find silver rivets for some reason and these were really easy to use as all you have to do is make a hole in the fabric with a tailors awl and then hammer the pieces together. The bag feet, D rings and the small swivel clips (for a tab inside the bag) came from a website called u-handbag which is a really great resource for buying lots of lovely things for making bags and the huge pink buttons came from a local craft shop for 65p each, they are only for decoration though (I think I may have mentioned my love of buttons before!). Also not photographed here is some bag bottom plastic grid that I also got from the u-handbag website so it keeps the bottom of the bag from becoming all horrid and saggy.

These are all of the fabrics I used with the exception of one which is a pink spotty fabric that I used for the large inside pocket. I used it as an afterthought instead of the plain white fabric so never thought to photograph it. I wanted to use really girly fabrics and found all of these in my collection so didn’t actually have to spend any more money on them. I did initially want to use some Cath Kidston fabric but at £10 a metre I decided it was going to be too pricey and also wanted it to look more individual and different to any other bag. I used the black ikea fabric for the main outside fabric and the rest were used to make the lining with the exception of some pink cord which I used to make the outside pockets.

I have never actually used a proper pattern before so was a little unsure what to do with it. When I was at uni and doing projects we had to make up our own patterns (I have no idea how to do this now I just can’t remember). I started by cutting out every single piece before realising that I only needed the pieces to make bag A. Thankfully everything worked out ok once I got myself organised.